The imitate to benefit syndrome gets you nowhere
Every once in awhile I get an email that asks me to give out ideas (strategy) that previous clients used to achieve a particular goal. I’ve attached part of a conversation below which only explains part of the story but let’s just say that I’m being asked for secret recipe that they can plug and play and voila!
I can give you this information but it’s no use to you because if all you want is to try to copy their success, let’s just say you’re going nowhere. Best practices that worked for someone else don’t necessarily mean they’ll work for you. You shape your business based on your own strategy that works to your unique mix of strengths and weaknesses.
Strategic behavior that benefits you
If you truly want to differentiate, look outside your industry. Pick a goal like ‘we will provide the best customer service period to our customers’ and instead of looking for ‘examples’ on how your competitors might do this, look for companies that are known to give the best customer service in their respective industries and see how you could use that to your advantage.
Examples of companies that give superior customer service are Amazon, Zappos, Ritz Carlton, GoDaddy and they all have different ways of achieving this. They’re all known for this because they’ve stayed away from conventional strategic logic and are willing to do what their competitors can’t even dream of.
The whole point of being strategic is to be so different that your competitors will try to emulate you, not the other way around. If you can’t win in the game you’re playing in, think for yourself and create your own game.
What say you?
P.S. Sorry for over-linking to my Posterous blog but I think you can see a pattern there.
Failure is an idea not an outcome
We are all failures – at least, all the best of us are. – J.M. Barrie
As a society, what keeps us from creating anything worthwhile?
FEAR.
Rock climbing requires a tremendous amount of focus by keeping your emotions in check in the ever present fear of falling to your death. If don’t control your fear you die, it’s that simple! For climbers falling isn’t failing, falling is just part of succeeding. In innovation the idea of failure is being wrong.
Compared to business where losing your money and your pride is not the same as losing your life, this seems crazy. Yet in business where we have so much more freedom to do great things we still choose to take the safe route. Not innovation just more of the same…
Innovation is tied to failure but it’s not tied to death. Why do we fear innovation then?
Think about it, will you lose your life in business? In the short term you might lose comforts but in the long term what you gain from failure is a sharpened sense of freedom. To do as you wish and not letting others set rules by which you have to operate. Innovation is freedom to do as you wish. Thinking about what you want to see in the world and then going out and creating it, that’s innovation.
A great many people in the history of humanity have pushed fear out of their system and went on to create the world we know see, hear, taste, feel, smell and use. The fear of being wrong, the fear of losing, the fear of rejection. All of these contribute to closing ourselves from the limitless potential each of us has to changing the world.
When you learn to accept that fear is present in all of us, a big door is open and you’ll see the world through a different set of eyes. And when you get to this point you’ll realize that you don’t have to wait for permission to innovate, you can take matter into your own hands.
UNDERSTAND: Failure is often an idea, not an outcome that stands in the way of successes. The greatest enemy we have as humans is fear. Root it out of your system as soon as you can, attack it. Don’t just do it for you, do it for humanity because we need innovation.
P.S. If you’re serious about ‘taking on your fears’, I recommend you read The 50th Law by Robert Greene and 50 Cent. This book follows 50 Cent’s journey from a drug dealer to the person he is right now, once you read it you’ll see 50 in a whole different light!
Must read innovation stories of the week: Mental models determine business models
Much like humans have mental models that determine their beliefs about how the world works, businesses have business models that do the same. And just how us humans get stuck in our own thoughts if we don’t feed ourselves new experiences, business models become irrelevant when they don’t evolve.
Your business model will only change if you adopt different perspectives and this means you have to start with the culture in your organization and how they view the world. You need to work on the questioning assumptions your culture has about how the world works so it can start thinking about how it can work better for you.
IInputs determine outputs. Want a new business model? Check your mental model first.
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Stuck? Take A Look At Your Business Model (Business Week)
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Born Innovators : Innovation (American Express OPEN Forum)
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Get Better Ideas, Not More (Innovation Leadership Network)
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Innovation – an era or a fad? (Innovate on purpose)
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The Business Model Innovation Matrix (The Business Model Database)
Weekend innovation tip: Look for tipping points
Here’s a fascinating talk about our digital future by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jesse Schnell who dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular "Facebook Games" era. Prof. Schnell sees a future where our behavior is determined by the same way outcomes in games are determined: by the number of points we get by doing a task.
This is very interesting and you should definitely watch the video, it’s well worth the 28 minutes!
As a fellow gamer, this doesn’t hit me as strange because games have built ‘addictive mechanisms’ that while annoying sometimes; you’re still playing another 2 hours. And now we have all these social games that are also moving into the mobile arena that will get us doing things to get more points while interacting with out environment. The fact is, games are addictive and companies like Zynga and Foursquare know this and are making great use of these mechanisms (I’ve stayed away from Farmville as I believe is a BIG waste of time but know people who are HOOKED on it like crack!).
What’s happening beneath these ‘trends’ is that industries are overlapping on one another and the tipping point was when Facebook opened it’s application platform to developers a few years back and then network effects took over that now almost half a billion are only a click away from becoming contributors to point gaining behavior.
Could we have predicted that social gaming would take off as it has? No. Could we have anticipated? Most likely.
We’re evolving!
Different domains are converging with one another and is shaping our behavior. Yesterday I posted my thoughts on the topic of evolution and I argue that to evolve doesn’t mean to grow, it means to change. Change doesn’t come from doing the same thing over and over again, it comes from the convergence of different domains. It’s very hard to predict what might happen, but what we can do is try to anticipate these changes or if you’re brave enough, create the change you want to see in the world yourself.
So how do we look for turning points? Here’s how I go about it:
> Try to determine the underlying causes behind competition in different domains and think about how these might overlap.
> Look for any sudden successes or failures in the business world that people find hard to explain.
> Examine the greatest anxieties of those on the inside of any business or industry.
> Keep an eye out for any kind of shifts in tastes or values.
More importantly after you’ve thought about the things above, ask yourself ‘WHY’ 5 times for each! You don’t have to be a great forecaster (for all we know they don’t know either!), you just have to be aware that things evolve. How this happens and what the outcome will be is what we want to anticipate.
Change not growth
What’s very dangerous is not to evolve.
See that strange looking animal that looks like it was in the movie Avatar? It’s called a Mexican walking fish, or axolotl, and is one of the most bizarre creatures on the planet. Not just because of how it looks but because it has the distinct ability to regrow limbs. The mexican walking fish isn’t really a fish, it’s salamander and it’s closely related to frogs and other amphibians with whom they share some of the same characteristics.
Enough with biology class. Why did I put that picture in this post?
Because as bizarre a creature this is, it reminded me of how everything evolves and how different species combine or recombine themselves to form new species that adopt the abilities of others and so forth. We’re so used to seeing the same types of animals all the time that when we see something like an Axototl it seems alien to us.
The same happens in business, we get so used to seeing the same types of businesses all the time that when we see one that operates in a totally different way than the others they seem crazy to us. And you know why? Because we’re not evolving, we’re getting left behind and pretty soon the one’s that are evolving will put us out of business.
And then the cycle repeats itself. Where in the cycle are you?
I think it’s important that we be aware that we also must evolve. Consultants will tell you that you need to cannibalize your business, what they’re really trying to tell you is your business needs to evolve not because they say so but because everything changes.
To evolve doesn’t mean to grow, it means to change.
Like evolution, change doesn’t start in the mainstream where you’re sitting, it starts at the edges. Like new types of businesses, new species of animals are created at the edges and then some eventually move to the mainstream while others stay on the edge.
Do you think your dog, cat or fish has looked that way forever? Do you think your business will look the same way in 5 years? Do you think your customers will always want the same thing you’re selling? Do you think the industry/market you operate in will always exist, operating in the same way with the same players in 5 years? Do you think tomorrow is going to be the same as today?
The answer is: NO.
One last thought to remember and you knew it was coming: It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin.
Hopefully we’re all changing to stay relevant, not just in the pursuit of growth.
For breakthrough ideas read the unreadable
Chaos, where brilliant dreams are born.
Do you ever get this feeling that when you read the same stuff over and over again and then you try to read something completely unrelated you become bored very easily? Well that’s a very bad problem to have if you want to get into the business of ‘doing innovation’ because breakthrough ideas rarely come from looking in the same place.
You want some new ideas everyday? Read stuff that’s unrelated to your field. John Jantsch calls this ‘the single best way to discover innovation’ and he’s right, the best ideas come from the intersection between ideas from different domains.
Recent research says that the ability to associate between different ideas is one of the key skills of innovators, so you would do well to cultivate a habit of coming up with ideas by combining them not just in different ways but from different domains. For example if you’re into science (like me) then read art and if you’re into art then read science. If you’re a wine lover and know how wine is made, learn how milk is made.
After you’ve done this for awhile and get used to tasting something new, go farther. As in go crazy and push your minds associative abilities farther for example: Let’s say you want to design a very sturdy looking chair, go to your backyard and search for a strange insect like a Praying Mantis and then examine it closely with a magnifying glass and look at how it’s legs are very thick looking. Take pictures of this and then do some in depth research on it and see how you can apply some of it’s mechanics to your chair design.
This example might not land you a breakthrough but I think you get the point. With so much information out there, the ability to filter and then make sense of it can and will land breakthrough ideas at some point and by practicing your associative abilities you’ll be much more ready to spot unrelated connections that may make sense.
This phenomenon is explored deeply in The Medici Effect from Frans Johansson, a book that shows us how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory. If you haven’t read it here it is free for download.
Onwards then to practice breakthrough thinking.
Why should people learn to innovate?
In my entrepreneurial journey I’ve come across people who pretty much don’t care about ‘innovation’ but what they do care about is how they can extract (notice I said extract and not create) more value from their customers. It’s fair to say that those of us who preach the ‘there’s always a better way’ gospel run into this type of thinking all the time.
Yet how do we explain to these people that they too should learn to wield the sword?
Here’s my answer:
Because innovation is change and change is better.
We all have the innate ability to be creative and therefore with help, collaborate towards something better. Innovation is a team sport and is something we must constantly be doing and not outsource it to a special few. Anybody can and should contribute and I believe it is our job (leaders) to bring them with us.
Sure there’s risk involved but then again when has anything worthwhile been done without risk? We don’t have to minimize risk, we have to manage it to push us forward.
Bottom line is innovation is something that results in something that is bigger than ourselves and this in turn brings society together in new ways towards progress.
What say you?
Innovation: respect the process
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Master the instrument, master the music, then forget all that shit and play. – Charlie Parker
Some say innovation is predictable, I agree. But to a larger degree it is not because you can’t really tell where it’s going to come from and who will be holding all the cards. Right now you’re probably in the ‘innovate or die’ mindset, you’re also probably feeling frustrated because you’re reading blogs, following innovation consultants on Twitter to try and do innovation but you are not getting anywhere.
Let me help clear things up for you, innovation takes time. It needs to be nourished, it needs to be practiced, it needs to be mastered.
All human activities involve a process of mastery
People are impatient by nature, we want things fast and easy. We want money, success, attention all right now. The problem with this thinking is that it’s all in the short term by sacrificing ‘being relevant’ in the long term. What you want is to outlast your rivals, building a foundation for something that can continue to expand well into the future and this requires patience and tenacity.
Doing this is not easy because we have to fight our natural tendency to want things as fast as possible. It can be done, but you must learn to endure the hours of practice and drudgery, knowing that in the end all of that time will translate into a higher pleasure; mastery of a craft and of yourself.
Your goal is to reach the ultimate skill level, an intuitive feel for what must come next. To do without doing, to know without knowing.
“What” is easy; “how” is harder
Pursuing the goal by telling everybody that you’re going to innovate is easy (what) but actually doing it (how) is another story, the fact is creativity is a state of mind and innovation is the process. So if you’re trying to make innovation a part of your company’s DNA you would do good by first starting to master what makes people innovative (creative style), then create a process by which your people can put those abilities to use and then let them play!
It’s about the journey, not the destination, creating things has to be fun but like my friend Gregg Fraley says: persistence, patience, and perseverance are as important to innovation as brilliance. Call it the three P’s of Innovation.
And remember that innovation is not a one time thing, it’s a commitment to staying relevant.
A notebook that will help you solve your problems
I’ve got a really fresh brain after this weekend because I read Jack’s Notebook by creativity and innovation expert Gregg Fraley, it’s my first time reading a literal business novel so it was refreshing to have a book put my visual senses to work and putting me in the story. Jack’s Notebook is essentially about a guy named Jack Huber and his friend Manny who is a professional problem solver that helps Jack get his life straight through the use of CPS (Creative problem solving) to solve his work and personal problems.
So what is CPS? It’s a technique developed by Alex Osborn who coined the term brainstorming and it basically helps you have more ideas and therefore more solutions to any problem you encounter. CPS brings order to the chaos that is solving problems, it’s a systematic process of creating lists and then making decisions. That simple!
Like business and life, the story has twists and turns and the problems that Jack faces are solved using CPS in a very simple way. This leaves you with this feeling of ‘uh that was easy!’ and I think this is really the big takeaway most people will get from the book…solving problems doesn’t have to be hard, it can be fun!
So if you’re stuck in a corner and always seem to do the same thing over and over again with the same result because you try the same old ideas then I recommend you read this book. In fact even if you think you’re pretty fly at solving problems already and don’t think you need anymore lecturing, you should read this book because most likely your brain has gone stale and need some refreshing…we all do!
Mr. Fraley has given us a notebook with all his secrets and he wants to help us solve our problems in a fun way and the plus is it’s also a great story. Get it. Read it. Start your own notebook.
Once you’ve read it, follow Gregg Fraley on Twitter and tell him what you think.
P.S. Thank you Mr. Fraley!
Must read innovation stories of the week: A culture of innovation starts with us
Any change we want to see in ANY domain starts with the man in the mirror:
I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change
Guess who said that…
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How To Be An Innovative, Not Just Business, Leader (Forbes)
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How Google sets goals and measures success (Don Dodge)
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A Culture of Innovation Starts with…Us. (Zane Safrit)
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How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation (Social Media Examiner)
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How to spot – or avoid – innovators (Innovate on Purpose)
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Break the rules to reveal innovation opportunities (Innovation Tools)
